Police in St. Mary’s investigating a man’s theft complaint from a sex-for-money encounter at his home took the case a step further last week, court papers state, as they put a detective in a motel room and eventually charged a woman with attempted robbery.

Marisa Lee Horton, 19, of California was released on $10,000 bond last Thursday after her arrest on the attempted robbery charge, plus the illegal possession of oxycodone and a prostitution offense.

A day earlier, the detective with the Maryland State Police sent Horton a text message from the motel, court papers state, and she arrived there that afternoon.

Horton asked for $70 in exchange for sex, and the detective put $100 in her purse before he went into the bathroom, according to the charging papers stating he came back into the room moments later and arrested the teenager.

“The defendant advised her intention was not to have sexual [relations], but to rob the detective of his money and personal belongings,” Trooper Dustin Brill wrote in a statement of probable cause. “She advised while the detective was in the bathroom, she rummaged through his bags and the drawers at the motel for items to steal. The defendant admitted she had committed the same crime three or four times over the past several months.”

Horton said Tuesday that she will contest the charges in court.

“I’m going to plead not guilty,” she said during a brief telephone interview. “It wasn’t really like they said. It was entrapment.”

Last week’s police sting operation, at the motel not identified in court papers, followed an incident last month at a residence, where charging papers allege that Horton arrived after getting a call from Carlos Alberto Reyes, asked him for money in exchange for sex acts and attempted to take a laptop computer while he was in a bathroom.

Reyes got the computer back before Horton fled, court papers state, but he later discovered that his wallet was gone.

Horton has been charged through a summons with a theft offense and property destruction after police investigated that incident.